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‘Pinch’ Review: An Amusing Takedown of India’s Patriarchal Structures

In the sure-footed debut 'Pinch,' premiering at Tribeca, director Uttera Singh plays a wannabe vlogger trapped between a rock and a hard place.

All the while, she breaks up her scenes with stray shots and sounds of Indian classical instruments — a chorus that occasionally bleeds into the reality of the film, as its characters traverse apartment hallways en route to each other’s front doors, usually to start or continue some subdued, passive-aggressive conflict. Figuring out the twists and turns of this social labyrinth is part of the movie’s fun, as Singh imbues Maitri with a sharp, acerbic wit, and captures her most troubled outbursts via a Snorricam rig affixed to her torso, matching her every minor movement. The vlogger aspect of the character is only really a backdrop element — it seldom comes into play in the narrative, beyond depicting desires out of reach — but the resultant meta-text, in which Singh controls her own story by pointing the camera at herself, while Maitri slowly loses footing, is delightfully tongue-in-cheek.

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